Hi, my name is Frank and I am totally unqualified to review coffee, but I’m going to do it anyway. Why? Because one of the great things coffee does, my coffee at least, is make you unrealistically optimistic about everything. So here goes.

I do my coffee things a little different. I order my coffee beans –green — from an online retailer called Sweet Maria’s out of somewhere in Cali. Once the beans arrive at my door, I have to roast them. I do this by using an oven, a roasting pan, and some good ol’ American Reynolds Wrap. I preheat the oven at 400 degrees, spread out some beans on the pan, and insert said pan into the oven. Now, once the roasting begins, you have the option to roast the green beans as dark brown as you like. Generally speaking, the lighter the roast, the higher the caffeine content but the less intense the flavor. This particular set of beans (from the packaging: “Mexico Org. Celso Garcia Coop, City+ to FC+, Unequivocal brown sugar sweetness counters bittering cocoa tones, roasted almond, pecan nut accents. Good for espresso”) in its “blonde” or lightly roasted form (it has a light brown color to it), has a very “light” flavor. Not very intense either way. I am tempted to say neutral, but that seems incorrect somehow. It does have a hint of nuttiness to it and also a hint of sweetness. But very light, and does not linger upon one’s breath in a foul manner. In fact, it makes me think of a poem by that great American poet Jenna Jehova Java that goes, like:

Soft upon one’s kissèd breath
Staving off the fiends of wicked death
This coffee doth not linger
Unlike the Scythèd, crooked finger
Now, all perked, we’ll feel as birds, as fresh
And muse upon our eternal, wingèd rest.

Yes, I think that sums everything up quite nicely. Except for this:

This coffee, in its shadow hours, also brings forth wild dreams. Last night, these dreams included the following:
A skinny man with brown hair was in a green and white striped polo shirt, on the phone trying to get someone to date him, while in the background a big hand — pink and unusually large — came over the face of a supine victim, and eventually sent him off to death with long, octopus-like fingers wiggling wildly.

In the second, a man in big, ‘80’s-style glasses was in front of a room of employees and management and was talking about the importance of property insurance. He was also pulling these little ticker-tapes through the wall. There was a lot of chatter in between the times when he was talking, as if the people in the assembly were anxious or nervous or distrustful or something. Lots of conversations and a general atmosphere of confusion and near-chaos punctuated by the times he would pull these ticker-tapes through the wall and then make an announcement about the importance of obtaining the proper amount of property insurance.

So, if you purchase and drink this coffee, these are the kinds of things you might expect to happen in your life: poetic ramblings, nonsensical dreamings, and a nice of not overpowering flavoring of coffee. I hope you’ve enjoyed this totally unqualified coffee review. It’s been real, sort of.

Posted by Frank Marcopolos

Frank Marcopolos lives in Austin, Texas. Hiding from the ever-present Texas sun because of a well-founded fear of skin cancer, he writes short stories and novels that have been praised by some readers, while others have been, like, "Meh."
He also produces free audiobooks of public domain works on his YouTube channel. You can subscribe to that here: http://youtube.com/brooklynfrank

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FrankMarcopolos.com is the home of author and voice-over artist Frank Marcopolos (rhymes with "Metropolis.") Frank was with the 82nd Airborne Division during the war. He now lives in Austin, Texas. Sample his fiction for free here: